I Dreamed of Stars
by Katrina1
Summary: When Mulder goes missing, Scully reflects on things he said to her that keep her hoping for his return


TITLE: I Dreamed of Stars  
  
RATING: PG-13  
  
DISCLOSURE: Not mine, never will be. All well. At least Mulder's back now and I don't have to sorry about these depressing stories without him (  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
I Dreamed of Stars  
  
  
  
I dreamed of stars. But first, I dreamed of darkness.  
  
In the center of a blackened room, there you were. Yes... you are the man of my dreams, Mulder. I can practically hear you snickering about that. But in this nightmare, you were not smiling. You did not cock your head at me in any crude, suggestive joke. You did not swagger toward me to propose some new, wild theory. You could not even stand.  
  
You lay pinned in the glare of a spotlight. Its focused glow underscored the vulnerability of pale, naked flesh against inky darkness.  
  
The chair upon which you were racked seemed completely alien. Strapped to this elaborate pedestal of torture, your repose spoke volumes of pain. You screamed at me in the language of your body, pleaded for me to free you. But this was your crowning glory, and some cruel, cosmic Jester appointed me merely a witness to the court. I could only watch as restraints held you firmly in place, as hidden captors tormented you, as lines of hooks and wires tore the silence from your lips.  
  
Unable to bear the expression on your face, my eyes slid across your skin. I took in the tension in your chest, your arms -- finally alighting on your hands. You have such big, strong hands, Mulder. Some evenings when you held me, there seemed room left in your embrace to cradle a galaxy or two. I found my home in your arms, as you did in mine.  
  
Not this night. This night, you were just a speck of ghostly white in a sea of ebony. The tendons in your wrists were pulled taut as you clenched fists, shaking ever so slightly against the rough bindings that clutched you to that grisly throne. As I watched, invisible and impotent, my prince uncurled the fingers of one trembling hand. You stretched toward me, Mulder, reaching across space, time, and consciousness...  
  
You dreamed of me.  
  
*  
  
I dreamed of waking.  
  
Sudden and harsh, cool air swept across me as I sat up in bed and dropped the blankets. Dressing hastily, thoughtlessly, I tugged a coat over my sleepy form and grabbed my keys by the door. Then I hurried across the motel parking lot to Skinner's room. I sought comfort. I willed him to reassure me that it was but a dream. Those words did not come; and as he accompanied me out into the evening, I might as well have been a billion years away.  
  
"Mulder once talked with me of starlight," I spoke aloud to Skinner.  
  
Of my memories, I spoke only to the stars. They seemed so vulnerable to me, the wide, dark sky ready to extinguish their tiny points of light at any moment.  
  
Remember, Mulder? Remember  
  
When we found that the body of that little girl, Amber Lynn LaPierre,  
  
When you lost your mother and found Samantha in a single breath,  
  
When you whispered to me,  
  
"These fates seem too cruel, Scully, even for God to allow. Or are the tragic young born again when the world's not looking? I want to believe so badly; in a truth beyond our own, hidden and obscured from all but the most sensitive eyes... in the endless procession of souls... in what cannot and will not be destroyed. I want to believe we are unaware of God's eternal recompense and sadness. That we cannot see His truth. That that which is born still lives and cannot be buried in the cold earth, but only waits to be born again at God's behest... where in ancient starlight we lay in repose."  
  
Some time later, as we bound up our wounds and prepared to chase forever more lights in the sky, you whispered to me again.  
  
"You know, I never stop to think... that the light is billions of years old by the time we see it. From the beginning of time right past us into the future. Nothing is as ancient in the universe. But, maybe they are souls, Scully. Traveling through time as starlight, looking for homes."  
  
In my dream, Skinner looked down at me with unreadable emotion in his eyes, drew me back to earth with a glance. So I cut short my musing and articulated my thoughts.  
  
"Mulder once talked with me of starlight," I reminded Skinner.  
  
"How it's billions of years old. How stars that are still long dead, whose light is still traveling through time... It won't die, that light. Maybe that's the only thing that never does. Mulder said that's where souls reside."  
  
"Hope he's right," I murmured finally, aloud.  
  
"Hope you're right," I told you through the stars.  
  
*  
  
When I returned, at last, to sleep that night... I dreamed of stars.  
  
*  
  
But first, again -- again?  
  
I had to dream the darkness.  
  
This time, Mulder, you were not restrained with cloth or metal or implements I could not even recognize. Still, you did not move. You lay on the ground, faded blue and gray and cold in a dirty blanket. And when your latest captors, the group of agents and officers guarding your body, parted for me to see you, you did not gaze back at me. You did not answer when I demanded of the intruders in our space: "How bad is Mulder hurt? How bad is it?" You did not respond when I knelt to touch your scarred, slack jaw. You simply lay there.  
  
So I ran through the dark, breaking away from the people surrounding me. Bodies tried to hold me, catch me, kill me with the news of your death, Mulder. But I ran faster, faster, tearing through the darkness as if the speed of light could carry me to find someone to heal you in time. To save you.  
  
I ran and ran and ran until a blaze began to spread across the sky. Then I pulled up short; I could only watch. Just like in my first dream, where you alone were illuminated for that torturous fate. Damn it, Mulder, you have been persuading me of the starlight for years. Now my eyes are open to it, my pupils dilated wide. I believe. So why must I still stand idly by?  
  
In this dream, the choice was not mine to make. So I stood, a small black silhouette at the top of a tiny hill, witness to the glow that bathed Jeremiah's compound. The brilliance washed over the house, lit up the prophet and his abductee patients and took them all away from me. They faded into light and I could not stop it. I could do nothing. Nothing, Mulder! The frustration when I threw open the doors of that empty building nearly burned me up inside. You vanished in Oregon; now a hundred souls more have gone; yet I remain fumbling blindly in this ocean of dark. When is it my time?  
  
I screamed up at the ceiling, willing it to split apart. But the sky did not open. The building did not shatter around me. So I did the only thing I could think of, and myself shattered instead. I screamed again, and denied the death of the stars.  
  
"This... is... not... happening."  
  
*  
  
Agents Doggett and Skinner arrived at the empty house soon after me. They scooped me up and balanced me between them as I stumbled numbly to the car. I do not recall exactly where they took me -- some hotel, I think? -- or how I got there. I only remember that I dreamed of stars. * Always, though... always, the darkness comes first. Why must I dream the darkness to see the stars?  
  
*  
  
I dreamed the past.  
  
I dreamed your bleak, gray years missing Samantha. I dreamed losing your father, losing your mother, losing yourself in profiles of serial killers and stranger, ever more evil phenomena. I dreamed losing my father, my sister, and my daughter, too. I even dreamed Agent Doggett's missing son.  
  
Through these nightmares, I slept only fitfully. I clasped and kicked at the covers, tangling the once-crisp white sheets around my fevered form. The hotel's simple bed had no headboard, no footboard -- nothing solid to grasp as I flailed my limbs out into the darkened space of the room. I stretched in every direction but forward, reaching for pieces of the past that remained just beyond my fingertips.  
  
*  
  
I dream this very moment.  
  
Sprinting toward your still form in hope. Stumbling away in horror. I live it over and over and over again.  
  
Through the endless black of the past, Mulder, you lit up a thousand of my nights. Yet I cannot find you in this most pressing time. In the search since your abduction, every glimpse of evidence we spy is already ancient. Even tonight, Mulder: By the time I found it, your body was a billion years dead to me. As I lay small and dark on a spinning sphere of earth, I can only wonder -- where are you *now*?  
  
I pull my knees toward my chest and ball my fingers into fists, willing myself to hang on as the planet tumbles recklessly beneath me. Squinting my eyes tightly shut, wrapping my arms firmly around my calves, I adopt a defensive posture against the darkness.  
  
*  
  
Finally -- finally -- I will dream our future.  
  
One evening, I will wake from this living nightmare and hurry forth for comfort. I will not knock at Skinner's door -- I will knock at yours. And when I lead you out under the canopy of sky, I will speak to you directly, without resort to stars.  
  
"You once talked with me of starlight," I will remind you.  
  
"You told me that the light of stars are souls. That these souls rush past us from the beginning of time on into the future, looking for places to rest. Your beautiful mind, Mulder... that was the only time you ever wondered aloud about God. You never were sure. It might all have made sense sooner if only you had taken the last logical step."  
  
"Scully, dear," you will smile down at me with a hint of laughter in your eyes, "I rely on *you* for logic."  
  
Belatedly, I will put together the pieces for you and for myself.  
  
"You said there are souls in the starlight," I will begin. "You said stars are souls searching for homes."  
  
You will nod, quietly watching the comprehension wash over my features. Oh, Mulder, so long I have sought you -- found you, and lost you, and found you again.  
  
"If stars are but souls looking for homes..."  
  
Sleeping yet, my mind conjures the most disturbing, pitch-black depths of night. Restless, I throw a desperate fist across rumpled bed-sheets.  
  
"If stars are but souls looking for homes..."  
  
Lost somewhere in that moment between waking and slumber, I uncurl the fingers of one tense, trembling hand. I stretch white fingertips into the blind space of the room, my flesh so pale it shines against the darkness. I reach forward.  
  
"If stars are but souls looking for homes..."  
  
In one more heartbeat, I will unclench both fists, throw my arms 'round your neck, tug your head down toward mine, and speak to you a billion emotions with the sparks of my eyes. But the first bit of my revelation must be uttered aloud. I need to hear the words as much as you do -- it's like pinching myself to make sure I'm not asleep. Do I wake or do I dream?  
  
As I whisper, "Mulder, you are home."  
  
*  
  
I dream of stars.  
  
I dream of darkness.  
  
I dream of that last heartbeat,  
  
Of holding you in my arms for a billion years.  
  
And perhaps -- just perhaps -- the stars dream of me.  
  
*  
  
End. 


End file.
